Can contactless payments be used to pay transit fares?
Two pilot projects, MTA New York City Transit and Utah Transit Authority, are evaluating the use of contactless financial payment devices to pay fares directly at subway gates and on buses, respectively. Additional information on these pilots can be found in the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council white paper, “Transit and Contactless Financial Payment: New Opportunities for Collaboration and Convergence”. In addition, since the late 1990s, U.S. transit agencies have made significant investments in contactless smart card-based automatic fare collection (AFC) systems. Currently, projects are under way in major metropolitan areas in North America to deploy fully integrated contactless smart card-based transit fare systems, where a contactless smart card as the fare medium. These projects use contactless technology that is unique for transit fare collection, rather than the technology used in the contactless financial payment cards offered by American Express, Discover Network, Mas
